Dinagyang Festival

Dinagyang is Iloilo City's January festival honoring the Santo Nino and commemorating the legendary sale of Panay island by ten Bornean datus to the native Ati people, expressed through tribal-style street dancing with elaborate body paint and drumbeats performed by competing groups called tribu across a multi-day citywide celebration.

Dinagyang developed in Iloilo City during the 1960s after devotion to the Santo Nino, already central to Kalibo's older Ati-Atihan festival, was introduced to Iloilo through a religious image gifted from Cebu, and local organizers built a new festival around that devotion combined with the legend of the Barter of Panay, in which ten datus from Borneo are said to have fled a tyrannical ruler, sailed to Panay island, and purchased land from its Ati inhabitants in exchange for goods, establishing the settlements that would become the Visayan region.